“This is my new friend from England,” chirps my classmate when she introduces me. I have never been to England in my life, but why should she know the difference between USA and England? Here in Penang both countries seem equally distant and unreal.

My family moved from Malaysia to the US for a couple of years when I was a kid, so by that age I already knew what it was to be an alien.

Don’t forget I’m running two giveaways for my anthology CYBERPUNK: MALAYSIA. Enter for free, win a book that is both shiny and chrome!

* I haven’t really been busy, unless you count “sleeping only three hours a night” and “obsessing over the Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell BBC series” as being busy. I do, but I admit there may be legitimate differences upon the point …

Phew! It’s been an overwhelming couple of weeks at work, but I had a day off today. (A whole day off! Er, if you don’t count working till 2 am this morning. Which, let’s not for these purposes. Whole day off!!) So Cephas and I went to Strawberry Hill House!

Strawberry Hill House is basically a troll house. As in, Horace Walpole was totally trolling via the medium of architecture. This is the only conclusion I can come to about a house that has wallpaper that is meant to make the walls look like they are made of carved Gothick stone.

(The walls don’t look like they’re made of stone. What they do look like is super cheesy!)

Horace Walpole also had a tiny pretty room dedicated solely to fanart of his novel The Mysterious Mother. I wish I was rich enough to build a room dedicated to fanart of my work. I mean, it would be empty, but still, it would be such an optimistic thing to have.

your thoughts on linguistic imperialism and people teaching english abroad, and people in asian countries learning english as a school subject – that sort of muddlei have a lot of mixed feelings about it (i think it’s possible to teach english abroad in a respectful manner and have a lot of professors that i love who did so, but then again participating in the leftover effects of linguistic imperialism??) and would love to hear your thoughts on it :OOO

I am pragmatic about this, TBH. I have taught English as a second language in Asian countries myself, so it’s not something I’m likely to get too het up about, though I am conscious of the privileges that allowed me to do so. But that’s kind of the point, I guess. In the world we live in right now, being fluent in English gives you power. Being able to speak English that sounds “accentless” to “native speakers”, or that has the right kind of accent, is a privilege.

My parents chose to bring up their kids speaking English for a reason, and I can trace a lot of the benefits and privileges I enjoy in my life directly to being good at English. So yeah, to a certain extent teaching English to people in majority non-English-speaking countries is participating in a messed up system — the whole reason English is there in the first place is because of Western hegemony, right? But most of us don’t have the option of opting out of this system. It is the system we live in. We have to figure out how to make a living and look after our families within this system. So there are two things I think are the right things to do in the circumstances:

There are three movies I can think of, and they are (surprise, surprise) the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I read the book when I was 12 – I distinctly remember it because it was in the joyous days after UPSR, and a classmate put me onto it. (I wonder who she was? I can’t remember her at all now.) And half a lifetime later, it seemed at the time – but only three years in actual fact! – the movies started coming out, reigniting my enthusiasm for the book.

The movies aren’t my Lord of the Rings – they’re too OTT and focused on fight/battle scenes, and the elves are too pretty, and the dwarves are not taken seriously enough (at least something The Hobbit movies are remedying, though The Hobbit movies are still not really worth it), and I will hold a grudge against Sean Astin for his overacting on the slopes of Mount Doom forever. But I like the movies for what they are, and they played a big role in my life.

I’m going to specify titles ‘cos it’s interesting to think about which specific books by these authors I like best for comfort reading, but in most cases the authors’ entire oeuvres fall under the heading of “comfort reading” for me.

L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables. LMM is probably my #1 comfort read of all time actually. OF ALL TIME!

Patrick O’Brian, HMS Surprise

Georgette Heyer, Cotillion

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Noel Streatfeild, Ballet Shoes

Jean Webster, Dear Enemy

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

P. G. Wodehouse, Psmith books (cheating and naming all of them because I can’t remember which instalment is my favourite)

Oddly enough I don’t feel Terry Pratchett really belongs on the list, though I rate him higher than several of these authors in certain respects. I feel like Discworld really shaped my worldview, and showed me that it was possible for books to be genre and silly and fun but also serious and clever – but for whatever reason I don’t seem to have that deep emotional attachment to the books anymore. I still like and value them, but it’s like I’ve taken from them what I need, and don’t need them anymore.

Well, I say that, but if I were to embark upon a reread doubtless the feelings would return!

Incidentally nearly all the books/authors I name above I came to at around age 10-12, which is probably why they have stuck with me. The only two exceptions are O’Brian and Heyer, whom I discovered at around 16-18.

I am definitely a warm weather person and mostly only like cold weather because there are some very nice fashion accessories that go with cold weather. (Scarves are a great thing. I never got the point of scarves until I realised that they actually work to keep you warm, as well as look pretty. Also boots! Boots are so great.) But I would give away all my cold weather things without a qualm in favour of a life spent in T-shirts, shorts and sandals.

My ideal kind of weather is to be found either early morning in Malaysia, or on a nice British summer’s day. I like unstinting sunshine, blue skies with a few tender puffs of cloud, a gentle breeze, the smell of earth and growing things, and a temperature range of 24 to 27 degrees Celsius.

That’s my favourite kind of weather, but I also like the weather on either side of a tropical rainstorm — before, when the wind starts whipping up the trees and the air smells of rain and grey clouds make the sky heavy; and after, when the world is washed clean and smells amazing and the air is cool.

My least favourite weather:

When it’s super cold and grey, but not cold enough for snow

When it’s super cold and grey and mizzling indefinitely

When it’s only kind of cold and grey, but it’s too cold to go around without your jacket, but when you put on your jacket you get too warm and sweaty — urgh, that is the worst kind of weather

When it’s warm and grey

Basically the sky should only be grey when it’s raining or about to rain or has just rained

And rain should not go on forever, and it should put its back into it when it does happen, and also there is nothing wrong with thunder and if you are going to all the effort of raining you should probably have some thunder and lightning as well, just to keep things interesting

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I edited CYBERPUNK: MALAYSIA, an anthology of short cyberpunk stories by Malaysian authors published by Buku Fixi. It's available in print (from Fixi in Malaysia and Amazon.com outside it) and ebook (Smashwords and Google Play).